CHAPTER 17

ELENA 

I had been avoiding Adrian for weeks now. Whenever his footsteps sounded somewhere in the house, I found something urgent to do elsewhere. Whenever he entered a room, I found a reason to leave it.

It's been weeks since Elias's panic attack. Since Adrian had looked at me with that cold, protective fury and said the words I couldn't shake loose from my head. I understood what he'd been protecting. That understanding didn't make the sting any smaller....he had no idea how much weight that single word carried for me too, or what it had cost me to hear it spat back at me like adding salt to an open wound.

Strangely, Elias had only drawn closer since then. He trailed after me more, sat beside me while I studied, sometimes settling near me without doing anything at all beyond existing in the same room. I didn't understand why. I wasn't against it, either.... not with my entrance exam looming the next morning and every ounce of company helping keep the panic at bay.

By midnight, my eyes had started burning, and I'd read the same sentence four times without absorbing a word of it. Staying in my room meant falling asleep within minutes, so I gathered my notes and went looking for somewhere else.

The mansion had a library. Of course it did... everything in this house existed in some absurd, oversized version of itself. I switched on the lamp nearest one of the armchairs and settled in, determined to make the studying stick this time.

An hour later, my head had started drooping despite my best intentions. I closed my eyes for what I told myself was a single second.

A sound at the doorway snapped me upright.

Adrian stood there, visibly caught off guard. "Sorry.... didn't realize anyone was in here."

"No, it's fine....it's your house." I straightened my notes, already half out of the chair. "I'll go."

"You don't have to."

I paused.

"I'm just grabbing a few books." He moved toward one of the shelves, and for a stretch neither of us said anything. The silence wasn't quite comfortable, but it wasn't hostile either... just the total awkwardness.

"How's the studying going?" he asked eventually.

"Good."

"Just good?"

I sighed. "Terrible, actually."

The corner of his mouth lifted. "Thought so."

"I've studied so much my brain's threatening to shut down." That earned a soft laugh from him and something in me loosened at the sound of it.

Before I knew it, I started talking about the subjects I liked, the ones I dreaded, the topics that refused to stay in my head no matter how many times I revisited them. I complained about the unfairness of a single exam carrying so much weight. He listened without interrupting, without telling me I'd said too much, just letting me run until I finally caught myself.

"Oh my god." I pressed a hand to my face. "I've been rambling this whole time."

"I noticed."

I groaned.

"I don't mind, though."

I looked at him. Something in his expression had softened past the point I was used to seeing from him, and I found myself smiling back.

Then my eyes dropped to my notes. "My parents used to help me study." The smile slipped without my permission. "Not really 'help'.... I never let them touch a single note. But they came to every exam. Every single one."

He didn't say anything. He just waited.

"My mom would bring this huge ice cream before I went in. She said I needed sugar for my brain." I laughed quietly. "It never made sense.... I was always too nervous to eat more than two bites."

"Sounds reasonable anyway," Adrian said.

"When I came out, they'd still be there." My voice dropped lower without my noticing. "My dad always had a teddy bear waiting. My mom had a second ice cream ready, like the first one hadn't even happened." I shook my head slowly. "They never asked if I'd passed. They didn't care about that part."

My chest tightened around the next sentence before I got it out.

"They just wanted to be there. Every time. Even when I walked out convinced I'd failed, they'd be standing there smiling like I'd won something enormous." My eyes started burning. "They'd hand me the bear, the ice cream, tell me how proud they were." A weak laugh escaped. "I miss that so much."

The words came out thinner than I meant them to. I looked away, but a tear had already slipped free before I could stop it.

"Damn it." I wiped it away fast. "I didn't mean to...."

Adrian moved closer without a word, reaching across the space between us to cover my hand with his. His thumb traced slowly over my knuckles.

"It's all right."

I stared at our joined hands. "They're gone," I whispered.

"I know."

When I looked up, something had shifted in his face too...a sadness I hadn't expected to find mirrored there.

"I never met my parents," he said.

My breath caught. "What?"

"Car accident. I was too young to remember either of them." His voice stayed level, though something underneath it wasn't. "Photographs are all I have."

"Oh.... I'm so sorry, I shouldn't have brought up...."

"Elena." He met my eyes again. "It's fine."

"But I made you...."

"You don't need to apologize." A faint smile followed. "I had Carrie and Phil."

"Your grandparents."

He nodded. "They were there for all of it."

I thought of Carrie throwing herself at him the moment we'd arrived, of Phil glued to a baseball game he refused to abandon for company. Two entirely different people, somehow generating the same warmth between them.

"I really like them," I admitted.

"They like you too. Carrie especially."

"Really?"

"Don't repeat that to her. She'll become insufferable."

I laughed, and for a moment the whole night felt unremarkable in the best possible way.... two people trading old griefs in a library at midnight.

Then his expression turned serious. "Elena. I owe you an apology."

"For what?"

"What happened with Elias. The way I spoke to you." He exhaled slowly. "I was frightened, and I let that come out as anger instead."

"You were protecting him."

"That doesn't excuse how I said it."

"It's okay," I said, and meant it.

"You're sure?"

"I'm sure."

He stood, gathering the books he'd originally come for. "I should let you get back to studying."

"Probably." I glanced at the mess of notes literally everywhere.

At the doorway, he stopped. "Elena." I looked up. "You're going to do well tomorrow."

"I don't know about that."

"I do." His smile was small, certain. "You've worked harder than anyone I've watched prepare for anything. Trust yourself."

Something warm settled behind my ribs. "Thank you."

"Goodnight, Elena."

"Goodnight."

He left, and I stared at the empty doorway for a beat longer then looked down at the hand he'd held and I found myself smiling.

---

The next morning, I stood outside the exam hall with my hearthammering against my ribs. One breath. Then another. I'd studied. I'd prepared as much as any human being reasonably could.

I walked inside.

The exam turned out kinder than what I'd expected. When I finally stepped back out into daylight, exhaustion hit me all at once.... and then I stopped walking entirely.

Adrian stood a few feet away. Elias beside him, small hand tucked into his father's.

In Adrian's other hand: an enormous ice cream cone, already starting to drip down the side and beside him: a teddy bear nearly as big as he was.

For a moment, I couldn't breathe.

He'd remembered. All of it....the ice cream, the bear, the story about my parents. I'd told him that story once, late at night, half-crying into my own hands, and he'd remembered every detail and brought it into the daylight for me.

Tears blurred my vision before I could stop them.

"How'd it go?" Adrian asked.

I opened my mouth. Nothing came out.

Because standing there, between the two of them, I didn't feel like a woman who'd lost her entire family, her marriage, and the years she'd meant to spend becoming someone else.

For one suspended moment, I felt like that girl again.... the one whose parents always waited outside, ice cream in hand, proud before they even knew the result.

And realizing how much I'd needed that, without knowing I still did, broke something open in my chest all over again.